The Choices We Have

So yesterday, we learned that the phone companies are so committed to helping the Bush Adminstration defeat the enemies of freedom that they would only cut off illegal wiretaps if the bills weren't paid, not because they were, uh, illegal.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation ''was halted due to untimely payment,'' the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

''We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,'' according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

True patriots, eh? When duty called, when September 11 happened (oh, wait, actually before September 11 happened), these brave footsoldiers in the trash-the-Constitution movement were more than willing to charge the government millions. Of course, the fact that the Administration let these kinds of bills go unpaid is ridiculous, too, but nobody's really covered in glory here. Especially when these are the same phone companies who want full amnesty for this lawbreaking, and the Administration has made it their top priority to deliver it to them.

In the wake of this, Harry Reid, if the Wall Street Journal can be believed, is looking to punt on FISA reform.

We're told that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying privately he now won't attempt to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the wiretapping of al Qaeda suspects. Instead, he'll merely support another 18-month extension of the six-month-old Protect America Act. Among other problems, the temporary bill includes no retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that cooperated with the feds after 9/11.

Now, let's remember that the Protect America Act was a piece of garbage that gave Bush everything he wanted, with the exception of telecom amnesty. Michael McConnell and the booga-booga brigade pretended that the terrorists were a-comin' to every member of Congress' house, and they capitulated almost completely. The civil liberties protections are negligible and the surveillance is virtually unlimited. The version of the FISA bill passed by the House was designed to fix this abomination, to need to do which is recognized by absolutely every Democrat.

So if this is indeed Reid's strategy, our options are now: maintain a bill that shreds the Fourth Amendment, or put forth a new bill that gives a little protection to the Fourth Amendment but lets the rapacious phone companies off the hook.

Remember, this is a Democratic Congress.